Rainforest Seafoods to launch into St Vincent and the Grenadines
Rainforest Seafoods Ltd has announced that it will be investing approximately US$10 million in an expansion project at their Montego Bay plant, and will soon launch a new plant in St Vincent and the Grenadines, according to a news release.
This announcement was made by Brian Jardim, CEO, Rainforest Seafoods, during the official tour of its Kingston plant with Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Wednesday.
According to Jardim, the Prime Minister of St Vincent and their Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries invited the company to set down roots in their island which makes it the fifth Caribbean country that the company will operate in.
Meanwhile, the new Jamaican facility will create more than 100 new jobs and will allow Rainforest to expand its markets abroad.
“We see an opportunity to berth our vessels to bring product in and to connect to Europe to Asia with live products,” Jardim said.
The two-acre facility, which will be in close proximity to the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, is expected to facilitate an increase in the exports of fresh and live seafood by Rainforest. The additional production and warehousing capacity will allow for the processing of a wide range of local products including lobster, crab, conch and finfish.
“It triples our storage facility which encourages us to produce and store. Our business is seasonal, we have buying windows and selling windows, matching the two with adequate storage really works out for us,” explained Jardim.
The prime minister, who was visiting the local seafood manufacturing organisation on his official tour of their state-of-the-art facility, congratulated the business when the announcement was made.
Holness hailed Rainforest as a diversified company that he believed has put a lot of thought into its manufacturing plant.
“I am very impressed, Jamaica can be satisfied that we have a first-world processing plant that has its own water plant, that you also employ over 600 persons ,” Holness said according to a news release.
Rainforest Seafoods has satellite operations in St Lucia, Belize, and Barbados. Across the Caribbean, they employ over 600 team members, 90 per cent of whom are based in Jamaica.
